> Thom Bradley asks major questions on queen rearing in his
> recent post. His best course of action IMHO, is to get
> hold of a book on Queen rearing...

Or a pile of books on queen rearing.

Even though we have had courses on queen rearing and raised many
thousands of queens, there have been some pretty basic questions we just
needed answers for.  One thing in particular that interested me was the
matter of the quality of emergency queens.

I've asked a few of those questions here and if any one really knows the
answers, he or she is keeping mum.  I have no problem getting people to
guess and repeat 'old wives tales', or get mad, but as for the real
low-down, or references to respectable research results, nothing was
forthcoming.

So, this spring, I broke down and phoned Eileen McCutcheon and said,
"Send me all the books you have on queen rearing that are any good at
all".  She was somewhat surprised, and asked how much I wanted to
spend -- and if there was a limit.  My response was that when we are
considering spending over $20,000 a year on queens, and when one
solitary queen costs is $12 to $14, we were prepared to pay whatever it
costs, but to hold back any books that were of doubtful value.  I told
here which ones we already have to avoid duplication.

A week or less later, a box of books arrived and a bill attached was for
$163.17, including tax and shipping.  We spend many hours mulling
through them and found that there were quite a variety of approaches,
and that each added something that another did not.  We also found that
they did not all agree on some pretty basic points.  One had a nifty
calculator to figure out when to start the grafting based on drone brood
and desired date for having an established queen.  All in all, I found
that an hour of reading any of the books was worth ten hours reading
BEE-L and 20 hours on sci.agriculture.beekeeping.

In the past, I have had some disparaging things to say about bee books,
mostly based on my own experience almost 30 years ago with the beginner
books.  I have collected some more advanced books since then, but
considered the field to be fairly narrow.  At this point, I have to
change my tune and admit that, in the past several decades, there have
come into existence some truly fine books on beekeeping.  For the price
of one computer, or even one beehive, a lot of good information can be
had in a very convenient format.  In spite of the amount of bee info on
the internet, including my own pages, I am inclined to think that books
currently have the edge.  That is one reason that I am not as active
here as I once was.  If I want quality information, I do try the net,
but I know now, that I'm better off ordering some books -- or re-reading
the ones I have.

I'm also thinking I should re-join the IBRA and pony up some cash to get
the real answer to some of my questions.  I know their research is
expensive, but the cost of ignorance is much higher.

Best regards to all.

allen